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Category Archives: Television

October means Halloween, and Halloween means more than enough vintage horror flicks to choke a werewolf. We’ve got ghost stories every Thursday, mummy matinees every Saturday, haunted houses, vampires that don’t sparkle, zombies, Frankensteins, mad scientists, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Vincent Price, psychos, schizos, proto-slashers, the original angry birds and even giant-mutant-flesh-eating rabbits! Upgrade your DVR’s memory and brew lots of coffee, because October it’s going to be wonderful. This is without a doubt the best retro TV month of the year.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 02, 2014

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) Special Theme: Ghost Stories

8:00 PM Topper (1937)

10:00 PM The Time Of Their Lives (1946

11:30 PM The Canterville Ghost (1944)

1:15 A Place of One’s Own (1945)

3:00 AM The Cockeyed Miracle (1946)

4:30 AM Beyond Tomorrow (1940)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 03, 2014

6:15 PM 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964) – TCM

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 04, 2014

12:00 PM The Mummy (1959) – TCM
The Hammer Films version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. There will be a Mummy Matinee at high noon every Saturday this month.

1:45 PM A Night at the Movies: The Suspenseful World of Thrillers (2009) – TCM
A documentary tracing the history of the thriller genre

3:00 PM Peeping Tom (1960) – TCM
A cult classic serial killer flick about a psychopathic murder who photographs his victims at the moment of death

2:15 AM The Fog (1980) – TCM
The John Carpenter original, and much better than the crappy 2005 remake

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2014

6:00 AM Night Of The Lepus (1972) – TCM
Giant flesh-eating Bunnies FTW!!! In hindsight, this film and Mike Marano’s brilliant analysis(suggesting that the mutated, carnivorous killer rabbits were an allegory for baby boomer hippies) may have been one of the earliest inspirations for Retro in the 90s.

I’m a lazy slacker and I was going to take the summer off of bloggin’, but there are so many outstanding and obscure drive-in-worthy flicks on the tube this month that if I let you miss them, I’d have to kick my own ass on general principle. There’s stuff playing that I’ve never seen. If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times, one can’t understand meta-retro without first understanding retro. Thus, I, your humble narrator, will continue to peruse the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) schedule and other basic cable listings to highlight all the classic Horror, Monster, Sci-Fi and Cult films from the Golden Age of American cinema that regularly resurfaced throughout the 1990s. Tune in, turn on, and veg out!

TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2014

8:00 PM The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) – TCM
Not the 1923 version starring Lon Chaney Sr., but still worth watching

There are enough vintage sci-fi, retro horror, and film noir flicks on display this June to choke a donkey. My only regret is that we can’t all watch them together at the drive-in. Speaking of which, you may want to double check your basic cable package to see if EPIX Drive-In has been added. It is ridiculously awesome with megatons of B-movie horror, giant monster, sci-fi, blaxploitation and regular ol’ exploitation films. As a result, my day time narcolepsy has never been worse.

Today, Retro in the 90s introduces a new recurring feature; TV CASUALTY. Obviously, one can’t understand meta-retro without first understanding retro. Thus, I, your humble narrator, will henceforth regularly pour through the Turner Classic Movies schedule and other basic cable listings to highlight all the classic Horror, Monster, Sci-Fi and Cult films from the Golden Age of American cinema that regularly resurfaced throughout the 1990s. Set your DVR…… to stun.

Of all the movie hosts who have come and gone over the years, one can easily make an argument that Joe Bob Briggs was the most prolific. As the king of all lowbrow media, John Bloom’s alter-ego authored a multitude of film reviews, newspaper columns, editorials, and books, while he starred in a one-man show, hosted horror movies on two networks, made cameos in several major motion picturesTM, founded the Drive-In Academy Awards, released his own brand of hand-picked DVDs, and was twice nominated for the Cable ACE award. Zacherle may have been the godfather, Svengoolie may have been the most likable, and Elvria was certainly the prettiest, but no one even came close to out-working or out-thinking Joe Bob Briggs.

For those of us outside the circulation zone of The Dallas Times Herald, our first exposure to the cosmic wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs came via The Movie Channel’sJoe Bob’s Drive-In Theatre (pronounced “thee–ate-ur”) which ran after 10:00 p.m. on Saturday nights from 1986 to 1996. Continuing in the 1950s tradition of midnight movies, the programming on Drive-In Theatre was entirely consistent with Joe Bob’s philosophy of what made for a great drive-in movie, namely “The Three B’s”; blood, breasts and beasts. The films shown were always of the drive-in/grindhouse/b-movie variety, running the gamut from cult horror, to the myriad exploitation sub-genres, and sex farce falling just shy of soft-core pornography. As a premium cable network, The Movie Channel was able to furnish more current films and show them in a completely unedited format, which gave Joe Bob a leg up on his horror host competitors. However, Drive-In Theatre also hosted some great retro fare such as;

The opening sequence to Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theatre was a flawless execution of retro-awesomosity. It depicted a man receiving a package wrapped in brown paper, which he promptly opened revealing a Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater kit. Then he proceeded to assemble the kit complete with a fake dashboard, car door, window speaker, steering wheel, rows of classic automobiles, a miniature snack bar and a dusky sky outline which surrounded the TV screen. The end result transformed the man’s living room into a perfectly replicated facsimile of a Mid-Century drive-in theatre. This was an extremely effective introduction which perfectly set the tone in approximately 20 seconds.

Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theatre followed the same format each week. Perpetually clad in a cowboy hat, western shirt and bolo tie, Joe Bob stepped out of his mobile home, sat down in a lawn chair, cracked open a beer and introduced the next film while regaling the audience with his unique Texan blend of scathing wit and down home charm. As a true raconteur, Briggs always had several hilarious anecdotes about each film, actor/actress, or director, often bordering on the unbelievable. One of my favorites was his introduction to Carnival of Souls (1962) an offbeat zombie move that preceded Night of the Living Dead (1968) by six years. Joe Bob simultaneously explained the entire back story of one-hit-wonder director Herk Harvey, cited the film’s influence on George A. Romero and Brian DePalma (of Carrie (1976) fame), lambasted “egghead professors” as well as The New York Times film critic Vincent Canby, and still managed to work in a shout out to the Lawrence, Kansas Convention & Visitors Bureau. Joe Bob Intoned, thusly.

“So for all the people who watched Carnival of Souls at the drive-ins of America and didn’t need some gooney professor to tell ‘em it was a great movie, let’s reclaim this one for the good guys. It’s a zombie movie! It’s not about existential angst! It’s not a symbolic parable! It’s a zombie movie!”

During each introductory segment, Joe Bob tallied up the Drive-In Totals which always included the number of dead bodies and breasts shown in the film. He would call to the viewer’s attention anything particularly shocking or noteworthy such as decapitations and car chase scenes. For example the Drive-In Totals for Frankenhooker (1990) were as follows;

In my humble opinion, mankind will never create a more efficient and user-friendly system for the review of movies, drive-in or otherwise.

After the movie, Joe Bob reappeared to give the viewing audience his final thoughts on the film, reveal a few more anecdotes, and answer fan mail. In hindsight, it was Joe Bob’s familiarity with the legends and lore surrounding each film that truly set him apart from any horror host who’s come before or since. Briggs appeared to have a photographic memory containing an encyclopedic amount of information pertaining movies, actors, directors, producers, crew, sets and ephemera. Keep in mind this was well before one could just look it up on the internet. The man did his homework diligently, but I’d wager it was a labor of love. There were always myriad stories behind the story shown on the screen, and Joe Bob did a better job of telling those than anyone. Below is a link to a fantastic clip from 1992 where Joe Bob reunited the original cast of Night of the Living Dead (1968) and remembered details that even they seemed to have forgotten. This goes above and beyond how ridiculously cool it was that he reunited the original cast of Night of the Living Dead!!!

Toward the end of each show, Joe Bob read news briefs regarding actual drive-in theatres that had recently closed, or were miraculously saved from closing at the zero hour. These were alternately framed as either a “Communist Alert” or a “Republican Alert” to equally offend the political sensibilities of his audience of sleazy cinemaphiles. He always concluded the segment with the chilling reminder, “Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here.” Joe Bob always rounded out the segment with a couple of jokes, often dirty ones.

For example…..

Q: Do you guys know what the Polish guy calls his zebra?
A: Spot

Q: Why did the pervert cross the road?
A: He was stuck to the chicken.

Q: Did y’all hear about the anorexic nymphomaniac?
A: she swallowed an olive and 5 guys left town.

Q: Did y’all know what 10,000 battered wives have in common?
A: They JUST! WON’T! LISTEN!

Finally, Joe Bob ended each night’s broadcast by stating, “I’m Joe Bob Briggs reminding you that the drive-in will never die.” Thus far, he’s been proven right. The drive-in was a quintessential part of mid-century culture, and Joe Bob fought to preserve it, for ourselves and our posterity. Perhaps his most important contribution was that he let so many of us know that there was a whole wide world of exploitation and cult films that we’d never even heard of just waiting to be rediscovered. And much like the super-cool big brother whom many of us never had, Joe Bob not only told us all about these films, but also made damned sure we got to see them uncut.

Furthermore, while watching these old clips of Drive-In Theater, I laughed repeatedly at the utter lack of political correctness. At the time, the 1990s didn’t seem terribly permissive, especially on college campuses. But I reckon the trite platitude “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone” is a worn out cliché for good reason. Outside of a Comedy Central roast, I can’t imagine anyone on cable today getting away with the utterly hilarious rants Joe Bob rolled out weekly. The following clip speaks for itself. Enjoy.

Note to hardcore Joe Bob Briggs purists: Hold off on the hate mail. I intend to do follow up posts on Joe Bob Briggs – Monstervision, and Joe Bob Briggs – The Written Works.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 was quite possibly the lynchpin which united the myriad factions of retro culture during the 1990s. While every hotrodder, garage punk, surf guitarist, rockabilly chick, swing-dancer, trekkie and monster movie aficionado I ever met loved MST3K, so did pretty much everyone else with a functional sense of humor and a triple-digit IQ. Case in point, back in 1994 I remember listening to a professor introduce himself on the first day of a 500-level microbiology class at THEE Ohio State University by stating, “I seem to have forgotten the syllabi. Well, we’re off to a very auspicious beginning.” After an awkward pause, he finally thought of something interesting to say, “OK, show of hands, who watches Mystery Science Theater 3000? I steal most of my jokes from that show.” Remember, this took place in a time when cable was still largely considered second rate programming, and Comedy Central was a relatively obscure upstart network. MST3K was far more popular than it had any right to be.

So much has been written about MST3K over the years, but for any reader unfamiliar with the premise, here’s a brief synopsis. In the not too distant future, the malevolent Dr. Clayton Forrester and his lackey, TV’s Frank, launch Joel Robinson, a janitor at the Gizmonic Institute, into space and force him to watch horrible B-movies as some sort of sadistic experiment. Trapped on board the ship, nicknamed the “Satellite of Love”, Joel builds several sentient robot friends. Two of these, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, watched the B-movies with Joel, whilst making jokes, wise-cracks, one-liners, witty zingers and non sequiturs at the expense of the films. The viewer could see their silhouettes in the lower right hand corner of the screen, as though you were seated right behind them in a movie theatre. This was the concept of the horror host carried through to its logical point of absurdity. It was both hilarious and wonderful.

There were also numerous skits between film segments with Joel and the robots trading barbs with Dr. Forrester and TV’s Frank. The invention exchange was a recurring gag, in which each side presented some ridiculous contraption they’d hastily assembled before the show. My all-time favorite was the “Fridge Udder”, which consisted of a cow patterned refrigerator where the ice and water dispensers were altered with milk-dispensing teats. Hearing Crow T. Robot repeatedly say “teat” on television before being injured whilst “fridge tipping” is the stuff dreams are made of. At the risk of going off on a tangent, inappropriate language was screened much more vigorously in the 90s than it is today. Back then, you couldn’t call someone a “dick” on basic cable, but somehow Crow and Tom Servo always got away with calling each other “dick weed”. It may have been misinterpreted as a benign botanical term akin to “pussy willow”, yet, I digress.

After one season on KTMA in Minneapolis, Minnesota, MST3K ran for seven seasons on Comedy Central from 1989 through 1996. For many members of Generation X, this was our first exposure to the cinematic genius of Ed Wood, Roger Corman, and the gargantuan terrapin awesomosity that is Gamera. It’s astounding to think about, but in the era famous for Terminator 2 (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and Independence Day (1996), millions of youths were tuning in religiously to see the likes of

Any way you slice it, that’s an awful lot of black and white golden age science fiction that most of us never would have seen otherwise.

In addition to the guys-in-rubber-monster-suits genre, MST3K screened a plethora of exploitation films, introducing extinct youth subcultures such as beatniks, greasers, and clean-cut outlaw bikers to a whole new audience.

The outdated attitudes, posturing and slang of the characters in these movies seemed comical enough in and of itself. Adding Joel and the robots’ commentary to the mix often resulted in laughter to the point of tears and incapacity.

A recurring theme of 1990s retro was initiation through ironic distance, followed by genuine affection. Moreover, many of those who initially watched MST3K to mock and laugh at old B-movies, and the passé values of the times they reflected, ended up actually liking vintage sci-fi and exploitation films. Liking them non-ironically, mind you. Mystery Science Theater 3000 was a gateway drug, which often lead to the enjoyment of Elvis movies, dabbling in obscure Japanese daikaiju, scouring eBay for bootlegged DVDs of Invasion of The Saucermen (1957), and finally metastasizing into a full-blown addiction to Turner Classic Movies.

Note to hardcore MST3K purists: Hold off on the hate mail. I intend to do follow up posts on MST3K – The Mike Years, and MST3K: The Movie.